blindness

A mysterious ailment causes "white blindness" to suddenly appear in a victim. This disease is highly contagious, with a variable incubation period. The blindness lasts for a period of weeks (or months), then just as suddenly disappears. Some people are immune to this disease. The cause and cure are not as yet known.

This sounds like an interesting plot for a science fiction book. However, in this case we have an attempt at societal allegory in literary fiction.

In an attempt to have us relate to the characters, all people and places are anonymous. People are only known by their characteristics or professions (the doctor, the woman from the office, etc.) This anonymity works fairly well, though it would have worked equally well if they had names and were located in a specific place.

The grammar is bizarre. Paragraphs and sentences are extremely long, with an excessive use of commas for division. Is this just a misapplication of a common literary device in the translation from the original Portuguese? Or did he really attempt to write in such a bizarre manner? It doesn't really matter. While it looks bizarre on paper, it actually "sounds" normal. The audiobook "erases" the oddities of the grammar, and sounds simply like a book.

The main point he attempts to make is the utter depravity of society once everyone turns blind. At first, people try to help the blind. Then as more people become blind, they attempt to kindly separate them from society. As things get worse, their treatment becomes worse. Finally as everyone becomes blind, society degenerates in to roving hoards trying to get whatever advantage they can. Kind or caring people are fairly nonexistent. (No wonder blind advocacy groups voiced objections to the movie.)

At the end of the book, people start seeing again. This throws out any last remaining shards of believability. If the disease lasts only a short period of time, how did everyone seem to come down with it at once? Wouldn't basic epidemiology require that some of the "early blind" recover before the later blind become infected. There would also have been more people (like the doctor's wife) immune to the ailment. Where are these people? In an attempt to show a terrible falling apart of society, the author focused too much on the bad, the author lost the believable applicability he was trying so hard to obtain.